The Handmaid’s Tale: Finally the start for the final season (critic)
On the way to its conclusion, the series so brilliant in the past finally restores its story and offers a dark, tense, crossed, through hope and political lucidity.
After two freewheeling seasons, where the series seemed to trample as June in Canada, locked in a sterile narrative and emotional loop, The Handmaid’s Tale Finally, start a determined turn. That of a story which, after having hesitated so much, finds a CAP, his epilogue in focus. How will the horror of scarlet servants end? Gilead Will he succeed in his respectability company? Will the world give in? America Will she disappear?
While the commanders’ regime is always more oppressive, the rest of the free world seems more and more inclined to let go. American refugees are no longer welcome in Canada, and aboard his train which takes him to the Pacific, June No longer really knows what life she leaves with Nichole. Especially since in the same wagon, Serena Also leak Gilead With his newborn in the arms. But the regime will quickly remember it. And remind him that at the origin, the widow Waterford believed hard as iron in the values behind the establishment of this theocracy.
That’s good: Gilead Seeks to make an image again, to soften his endemic misogyny to try to reconnect with the ideal that founded it. A political switch controlled by the Commander Lawrencewhich thwarts the geopolitical plans of an increasingly ghostly American government. Just a final pocket of resistance, to try to shoot down the commanders of Gilead. And of course, June Also will want to join the fight …
After giving the impression of turning empty, the series finds consistency, even if it means sinking a little more into its own dystopia. And it is precisely this distance taken with the news – which had long stifled her – which gives him air. Less dependent on the real political climate, The Handmaid’s Tale revives the nervousness of its beginnings. The issues have become clear, readable, exciting again.
Without naivety, this final chapter also understands that dismantling a totalitarian system is not done with simple slogans. Intelligently built, this season 6 has Gilead A more caricatural, more complex – and therefore more dangerous enemy.
The scenario gains in geopolitical density without losing the intimate. No more tortures highlighted at excess: Elisabeth Moss can finally replay something other than pain. In his gaze: wear, fear, but also a touch of hope.
The staging, always on the verge of mannerism, finds rhythm and tension. No more complacent slow motion: each choice counts, each decision weighs. It was necessary that The Handmaid’s Tale Reconnects to what she had stronger: an uncompromising political reading, a tense dramaturgy, and a damaged but standing heroine.
The series will never come back to the amazement of its first season – this freezing adaptation of the novel of Margaret Atwood. But this season 6 is undoubtedly the one that comes closest to it.
Irony of history: The Handmaid’s Tale was launched in April 2017, four months after the start of Donald Trump’s first term. And the end arrives four months after the start of his second term. Yes, the story stutters and recycles its nightmares. This is also what The Handmaid’s Tale has never stopped trying to say.
The Handmaid’s Tale, season 6, in 10 episodes, to see on OCS via Canal + in France, since April 8, 2025.
